Android is designated as a gatekeeper under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and as such is required to offer equal access to key features of phones and tablets to third-party companies.
The European Commission feels that Alphabet (Google) hasn’t done enough and has kept some features related to AI exclusive to its own Gemini platform. The Commission has proposed changes to resolve the situation and has invited people to a public consultation.
The discussion focuses on three key issues, quote:
- the ability of users to invoke AI-powered services via wake words
- the possibility of AI-powered services to effectively interact with users’ applications to understand their context and execute tasks on their behalf
- access to the necessary hardware and software resources for AI-powered services to be reliable and responsive
In more detail, the Commission looked at the long-press of the navigation bar shortcut – this triggers Gemini, gives it contextual data and allows it to overlay info on the screen. This is normally mapped to Google’s Circle to Search feature and is “not equally available to third-party developers.”
Similarly, the always-on wake word detection is mapped to “Hey Google.” The Commission wants Android to allow third-party app developers to be able to add their own wake words.
There’s more – app data (especially data that is only stored on the phone or tablet) can be accessed only through the AppSearch permission and that permission is assigned only to the default assistant and cannot be given to third-party assistants. You can read the whole thing here (warning: PDF). It covers Proactive suggestions, Context-aware intelligence, Ambient data and more.
In an email sent to Reuters, Alphabet’s Senior Competition Counsel said: “This unwarranted intervention would strip away that autonomy, mandate access to sensitive hardware and device permissions; unnecessarily driving up costs while undermining critical privacy and security protections for European users.”
A few years ago, Apple got into trouble for similarly keeping certain features locked to its own services, e.g. Apple Pay had exclusive access to the NFC chip inside iPhones. This was later opened up to third-party services, although the Swiss still have concerns.